Last Updated on June 2, 2021 at 7:11 pm
At the times of annual Darbar Move, a bi-annual shifting of the Civil Secretariat and other offices of the state government from Jammu to Srinagar in summer, and vice versa in winter State Road Transport Corporation (SRTC) rented private load carriers for transportation from one capital to another but did not use its own trucks.
As per documents, Sadriya Riyasat Order (SRO) 157 of 26 April 2001, the Government Departments had to hire trucks from JKSRTC only, when ever need arises. But SRO 157, got abolished in March 2018.
Government departments have to acquire No Objection Certificate (NOC) from JKSRTC before hiring from private entities.
The option of Contract Hiring of Trucks (CHT) from private transporters is there as per the demand of goods carriage vehicles.
As per reports, Corporation didn’t need trucks for goods carriage for the period from 2014-2019. Even the total demand could not be furnished to Audit by the unit in Srinagar.
Despite the fact that 63 trucks were purchased during 2018-2019, the Traffic Manager (Load), Jammu was not able to supply adequate vehicles as per requirement in Jammu division.
On one hand corporation were hiring trucks from private players, on the other hand keeping its truck idle in Srinagar.
As per reports Jammu unit of the Corporation could provide only to 19 per cent demand from its own fleet during period from 2014 to 2019, despite engaging private contractor for meeting the bulk requirement (74 per cent), there was a deficiency of seven per cent in meeting the overall demand.
Demand of trucks was not assessed at Srinagar, as a result the rationale for allocation of trucks among the two units could not be assessed when audit into the issue was conducted in the past. It was seen that although 36,805 truck days were available, only 1,211 were deployed by JKSRTC in Srinagar in 2018-19.
The concerned department in its defense to the past committees has stated that the fleet strength of JKSRTC is less as compared to CHT Contractor, due to which share of CHT Contractor is higher in meeting the demand of the Food Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (FCS&CA) and other Government Departments.
This also indicates that actual requirement was not assessed at the Corporate level. Also, 36 to 100 trucks of Corporation remained idle for want of drivers (April 2018 to March 2019) in office of the Traffic Manager (Load), Srinagar which comprised 19 to 50 per cent of available operative truck fleet of 201 in the unit.
Insufficient supply of trucks as per demand of carriage of goods despite of option of hiring from private players led to heavy revenue being lost.
